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Rautakesko is using Ekahaus RTLS system to analyze customer behavior in its retail stores.

For the past several months, the Finnish home improvement retailer Rautakesko has been using Wi-Fi RTLS solutions from Ekahau to capture key data on its customers shopping patterns. Upon entering a store, customers are offered an RTLS tag to carry with them while shopping, which then transmits location data throughout their visit.

Tuomo Rutanen, Ekahaus vice president of business development, says the fact that his companys tags use a standard Wi-Fi network makes Ekahaus solution particularly attractive to a retailer like Rautakesko. Retailers are increasingly putting Wi-Fi into their stores because they need it for a variety of different applications, from barcode scanning to voice, he says.

And from Ekahaus perspective, Rutanen says, the Rautakesko deployment is relatively straightforward. It goes back to the basics of what the Ekahau system can do, which is to track the location of objects using Wi-Fi as the reader network, and having the ability then to pinpoint that location down to a relatively precise measurement, within a couple of meters, he says.

Tracking people

Of course, in Rautakeskos case, the objects being tracked are people. With the ability to look at where people go in the store, what are the things that theyre stopping to look at, what are the aisles or endcaps in the store that people frequent the most, it gives them an idea, a fingerprint, of what people are doing, Rutanen says.

Think of it, he says, like a tracking cookie for a Web site. You can go back and look at what pages people are looking at on your Web site, and from that, ascertain whats interesting on your Web site and whats notand then those pages that dont get a lot of clicks you obviously want to revise, Rutanen says.

Ekahaus patented rail tracking technology, Rutanen says, is key to implementing that kind of system in a store. If we look at a floor map of a retail store, we use the rails to indicate to the program what the valid pathways are along which shopping carts can travel so we dont locate people onto shelves and things like that and throw off location, he says.

A graphic representation

The result is a clear graphic representation of traffic patterns in the form of heat maps. We can create some very simple, easy to understand reports and visualizations of what the behavior is like in the store, Rutanen says. And that can be looked at during a time of day, during a day, during a week, whatever time periodand it can also be mapped into demographics.

The heat map format, Rutanen says, simplifies what could otherwise be an unnecessarily confusing list of data. This could be reams and reams and reams of spreadsheet numbers which dont paint a picture for youbut this basically takes a snapshot in time and shows you whats happening in the store, he says.

And the retailer can then get a clear sense of what areas are most popular. That then tells you if youve got a product section thats hot, where people spend a lot of time, and then you can turn around and go back to your vendors and charge more for that space in the storeor market that space thats heavily trafficked to other vendors, Rutanen says.

Other retail applications

Other applications for retail, Rutanen says, could include tracking the average length of time spent in line at checkout, then staffing the store accordingly. Itll give you a good idea of when you need to have more people at checkouts to make sure that people get processed through quickly, he says.

A store could also easily use the same system to track handheld RFID scanners. The system lends itself to tracking those items, and you dont even need a physical tagwe can track them over the 802.11, because they have 802.11 radios in them and were talking handheld units that run anywhere from $1,000 to over $3,000 apiece, Rutanen says.

Ekahau is also working with other retailers, Rutanen says, on installing the tags on shopping carts along with a button, which the customer can press to request assistanceand a store associate can then simply locate that customer anywhere in the store using the Ekahau system. You can press the button and continue shopping, and somebody will come and find you, he says.

Looking forward

The vast majority of Rautakeskos customers, Rutanen says, havent been worried about privacy. The information is anonymous, so the consumer doesnt lose anything from a privacy perspectiveand the data is all aggregated anonymously, so an individual shoppers information is not really looked at, he says.

Rutanen says the system has now been implemented in over half a dozen of Rautakeskos stores, with the intention of doing so throughout the chain. Theyre continuing to do this in other locations, and theyre opening up more stores: its also an outfit thats continually expanding so theyre just trying to collect the data and look at how to better do their store layouts, he says.

And the same solution, Rutanen points out, could easily be implemented in a number of other markets, including hospitals, museums, theme parks, and more. We could use this in any type of venue or facility where you get a lot of people coming and going we definitely see a huge market opportunity here, and I think were only scratching the surface so far, he says.